


Unsaid

by levitatethis



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Reality, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-18
Updated: 2010-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-09 13:18:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levitatethis/pseuds/levitatethis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something is bothering Mohinder which in turn bothers Sylar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> Written for cellshader's prompt: "When or if he cried"

Sylar hesitates for a second and then raps the back of his hand against the closed bathroom door. “Mohinder?”

He furrows his brow when there is no response and leans in, bringing his lips close to the grainy wood. There is another momentary hesitation as he contemplates what he might be instigating. “Mohin—,”

“I’ll be out in a second.”

The abrupt and muffled reply immediately springs to mind an image of Mohinder on the other side of the door standing at the sink with both hands covering his mouth, possibly holding in a yawn or maybe rubbing the sleep from his face.

_Trying to stifle a sob.   
_  
Sylar stands up straight but lingers the palm of his right hand against the door. He bites back a defensive joke about mood swings. The sudden strangeness of the morning is not currently inviting any humour. He looks over his shoulder at their beds and sighs. His own is half made, the result of a mannered and meticulous upbringing, while Mohinder’s is a heap of tangled sheets.

_Has he been in there this whole time? _

The day before had unfolded uneventfully, save for he and Mohinder’s typically animated discussions that accompanied all of their road trips. But when Sylar had awoken in the middle of the night he had seen Mohinder’s bed was empty, the only indication of the man who had been resting there was the messy pile of twisted blanket and sheet, and the faint haze of a fluorescent light peeking out from under the closed bathroom door.

Sylar had not given it a second thought, instead rolling over and drifting off to sleep again. Now he knows something is off. He feels the door shudder under his hand and steps back as Mohinder opens it.

He looks exhausted and unforgiving of the interruption. His eyes are slightly pink from blood vessels strained beyond comfort and the way he rolls his shoulders and twitches his fingers before clenching them into loose fists at his side suggests discomfort. Their eyes meet.

_Are you okay? _

The question goes unasked. “We should get moving. Peter wants us rolling in for show by noon,” Sylar says intently taking in any possible telltale signs in Mohinder’s body language from a shifty stance to his eyes flitting off to the side illustrating his awareness of his odd behavior.

Instead Mohinder stays still and focused. “Let’s go,” he says, his voice flat, and casually moves past Sylar, picking his bag up off the floor and tossing it on the bed.

Sylar watches him unzip the top and pull out clean clothes with his right hand, creating a small pile in his left.

“You good?”

“Of course.” Mohinder’s response is quick.

_Liar. _

 

************ ********** ********** ********** ********** **

 

Mohinder in the driver’s seat accomplishes two things. One, it is Sylar’s way of granting him some semblance of control and power, something Mohinder seems to need more some days than others. Two, it gives Sylar the opportunity to let his own thoughts run wild.

Somehow in the middle of nowhere Mohinder has found a classical music radio station and the melodic language of piano, brass and strings fills the cramped rental car. Sylar gazes out the passenger window and drags the index finger of his right hand across the glass, drawing a strip of frost, then backtracks and melts the trail away. He repeats the process and casts a quick glance over at Mohinder.

Conversation between them has been stilted all morning. It is not that Mohinder is rudely ignoring him but that any topic Sylar brings up is met by clipped answers and words drifting unemotionally through the air. Whatever it is that is bothering Mohinder he is trying not to show it while at the same time not caring to cover it up with a business as usual act.

Sylar finds himself in a strange position. He has it within his power to interrogate the truth out of Mohinder, and with anyone else he would use that to his advantage. Without a care for the consequences, besides what would benefit or hurt him directly, Sylar would take a no holds barred approach. Mohinder, however, is not anybody and Sylar twists under the complication of wanting Mohinder to_ tell _him what is troubling his mind.

Mohinder’s unexpected lack of verbal skills suddenly springs to mind a similar occurrence three months earlier when they had crossed paths at Peter’s apartment after Mohinder and Matt had returned from a covert visit to Bennet’s home in California. Mohinder, normally prone to excessive wordiness amongst those he considered friends, was all quiet murmurs and far off looks. There had been a time when Sylar mused on the perfection of a muted Mohinder, but actually tasting that alternative had proven the theory wrong. Rather it put Sylar on edge.

The next time Sylar saw him Mohinder was mostly back to his old self, but they never spoke about what had happened. Thinking on that again at the mercy of a car he cannot just leave to get some air, Sylar’s frustration races. In his mind he spins through a card catalogue of names and dates that might be the root cause of Mohinder’s problematic attitude. Unfortunately nothing jumps out. Then again, with Mohinder it could be every possibility all at once overwhelming him into a stupor of insolence.

Sylar directs his frosty attentions to the front windshield. He raises his left hand and hurls forth a curved strip of frost, from right to left and down again. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Mohinder look at the icy infinity symbol.

“What are you doing?” Mohinder asks, his irritation unmistakable.

Sylar drops his left hand and raises his right. Following the same movement he melts the symbol, reducing it to condensation that streaks down the glass. Coolly he tones, “Oh I’m sorry. Are we speaking?”

Mohinder reaches for the radio’s volume knob. Sylar hears the music get louder momentarily then turned down low. Surprised, he looks at Mohinder who rests his head against the arm he has angled on the door’s ledge while gripping the steering wheel with his right one.

“What do you want to talk about?” Mohinder’s voice is tired as he struggles to emote the pretense of interest.

_How about the silent treatment for starters? _

“Art, politics, love, life,” Sylar replies with an inflection of mockery and he catches Mohinder’s questioning glance his way below an arched eyebrow. “Or we could keep playing twenty questions with no discernable answer since that’s always so much fun.”

Mohinder presses his lips tightly together and grips the wheel with both hands. “If you want to ask me something, then ask it.”

_Right, because this is about me. Maybe if you keep deflecting I’ll forget that you’re the one with the damn problem.   
_  
Sylar regards him for a few seconds past comfortable and contains his smirk when Mohinder shifts awkwardly in his seat. He feels the rush of still being able to make Mohinder uneasy, returning the unwanted favour that Mohinder inflicts on him.

“I’m worried that the meeting with Nikolai won’t go well. If he suspects the truth there’s sure to be trouble,” Mohinder says.

Sylar rolls his eyes at the fib and the audacity of hiding the truth. People lying to him is a daily expectation but he has always counted on brutal and even hurtful honesty from Mohinder. Sylar looks forward at the road. “I have to use the washroom.”

“What?”

“Pit stop.”

Sylar points his left index finger at the steering wheel and turns it slightly, veering the car to the right, into the exiting lane. Facing the palm of his left hand forward, Sylar angles it and telekinetically applies pressure to the breaks to slow them down as they approach the parking grid.

“Sylar!” Mohinder snaps through gritted teeth.

_So nice to have your undivided attention. _

 

************ ********** ********** ********** ********** **

 

Their past, although never forgotten, is a subject they have come to silently agree not to speak of.

Complications were one thing but Sylar could guess that theirs is a more puzzling conundrum with no agreeable outcome. It was not ideal to pack it away (Mohinder’s moody intervals were a testament to the long term ramifications of ‘ignorance is bliss’) but it was the only way they could stand each other’s company, something they had to do if the Resistance was to have any chance at success.

Truth be told there are other factors behind Sylar’s willing compliance of silence. He can play pretend as if some new symbolic leaf has been turned over with their eyes wide open. He can convince himself of the belief that they have settled the score.

When he and Mohinder joke together or partake in an intense three hour discussion, Sylar thinks it is as it always should have been with them. He tries to hold on to those moments with a vice grip. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he is suffocating the molecules right back into a stagnant state of unending suffering.

He considers the possibility that he likes punishing himself, after all why does he care so much about pretending with someone who has held the most animosity towards him? Better yet, why is the one person who genuinely gets him the same person whom he needed to betray so calculatingly? Everyone else met their maker face-to-face, the shock of their mortality petrifying. Mohinder, however, confronted the impending end with reckless nerve.

_Takes one to know one,_ Sylar thought time and time again between heavy-handed words and battered wounds marring skin and bone.

Too bad it doesn’t make anything easier. So he turns a blind eye instead—until Mohinder confronts him again with a more passive aggressive, if not more painful, set of actions. Nowadays Mohinder turns inward, folding in his limbs closer to his body, pulling himself into the black hole sphere at the center of this core. It does not happen often but it doesn’t need to. If actions speak louder than words then Mohinder is spewing an obscene diatribe.

Sylar, despite a carefully practiced countenance suggesting otherwise, is not so callous as to not appreciate the endless storm that brews within Mohinder. Sylar knows full well his own internal battle and by extension the stakes that are just as high for Mohinder. What he does not know is how Mohinder dealt with the consequences of a life that sidestepped logic.

He has no clue what peace, if any, Mohinder made with his past. Did he suck it all up and redirect it into a stoic display? Did he crash and burn away from prying eyes and wagging tongues? Did he think about Chandra, Dale, Zane and the beginning of the end of one life? Or is it simply a case of ‘that was then, this is now”?

When or if he cried, did he plead forgiveness for himself? Did he ask it for Sylar?

_There’s the rub.   
_  
Deep down in that supposed soul of his, Sylar _wants_ Mohinder’s forgiveness.

But forgiveness cannot be demanded.

And the unforgivable cannot set him free.

 

************ ********** ********** ********** ********** **

 

Sylar does not grovel.

And he sure as hell does not allow his concern for what ails Mohinder to trump his own stubborn refusal to appear unnerved by the situation. Sylar can be bullheaded if he needs to (although it does not come as easily to him as it does with Mohinder) and delaying their probably destructive heart-to-heart that will inevitably one day happen is made easier by Mohinder’s eventual, but expected, return to normal.

It is possible the improvement to Mohinder’s attitude came as a result of upgrading to a hotel room for their next layover, the trick being to remove the temptation of recalling the past that a motel room brought with it. Maybe Mohinder got over feeling morose for the time being. Whatever the temporary cure, Sylar does not complain.

Their meeting with Nikolai had gone better than expected considering the suffocating lead up of tense but ultimately superficial conversation they had placated each other with for the rest of the drive. In front of their mark they had played their parts to perfection and Sylar briefly contemplated that his internal lie detector was off in the car. But back at the hotel room Mohinder had silently dropped his bag to the floor and climbed into the far bed by the window and turned on his side, pretending to sleep.

Perplexed, Sylar had watched him lying still (too still to be anything but an act) as he moved about the room, unpacking his own clothes for the next day. Instead of turning in he had left Mohinder and went out for a bite at the diner up the street. Although he finished at a timely hour he had put off returning to the hotel for as long as possible, choosing to go for a long walk where he explored the nearby shops and store windows. Upon returning to his room just after midnight he had found Mohinder genuinely off in dreamland.

Sylar awoke the next morning to the feel of Mohinder gently shaking his shoulder and telling him they needed to check out, eat, and get back on the road. If he was surprised by the personal wake up call then Mohinder’s amused comments regarding some of the day’s stories in the newspaper he was reading while they sat across from each other at the same diner Sylar had eaten at the night before, left Sylar cautiously curious.

For the first time in three days Mohinder was relaxed and at ease. He was his (what had become) typical inviting self. Sylar was, to say the least, relieved. Still, he had to be certain.

He watches Mohinder pull out some money from this wallet and place it over the bill that he pushes to the edge of the table. Mohinder shifts in his seat as he tries to push his wallet more easily into his pocket and their eyes meet.

“Feeling better?”

The question halts Mohinder’s movements. Sylar leans back against the booth’s seat, slouched enough to present an air of confidence and casualness while he curls his left hand around his coffee mug and presses his right one flat against the cool laminate surface of the table; he quirks his eyebrow.

Mohinder looks over at the other patrons, then the table, and finally up to Sylar. “My not speaking all the time does not mean there is trouble or anything for you to concern yourself with.”

Sylar makes a fist with his right hand at the lie. Keeping unblinking eyes on Mohinder he raises his coffee mug and finishes the last of the lukewarm drink.

Mohinder holds his gaze then quietly adds, “There are things…I need my own time to sort them out.” He slides out of the booth and waits expectantly for Sylar to push his mug away and stand up.

Under a knitted brow Sylar watches him closely. He sees the nervousness in Mohinder’s eyes as they search his back for a glimpse of recognition regarding what he has said, and the strong defiance that tells Sylar not to push this any further.

Without another word Mohinder turns around and heads for the exit.

_Finally, the truth.   
_

**Author's Note:**

> Heroes Slash Awards  
> **Best Mohinder/Sylar (G-PG13)** (RUNNER UP)


End file.
